Fire Socks are Done!

Yet another sock project that has taken me months and months because I got distracted by other awesome yarns in between cast-ons. These I started at Christmas. And finished two days ago.





This yarn is one of the Kaffe Fassett-designed range from Regia. The colourway is "Fire" (Landscape version, not Mirage version. Much prefer the stripes.) Check out all the other fab colours here. I have my eye on the Exotic Ember....

Lovely Lilies..

...making my flat smell delish.

Fabulous Fabric

Right now I am enjoying a rare two consecutive days working at home! I've been doing a fair bit of library work recently - now that the big projects are done and I'm just working on a smaller writing project I've been packing in the extra hours to keep the bills paid.

Today, though, I've been able to work on said writing project. However, I had to pop out to the post office (and the tea shop, obv) this afternoon to post off one of my monsters I sold on Folksy (hurrah!), and walking around the town I came across this:





Weeeeellllll, I couldn't leave that in the shop, could I? Two metres of it accompanied me home and will be made into one AWESOME apron ASAP.

It was one of those days where I didn't want to come back home, as the sun was shining so nicely after a gloomy start and I liked the look of everything I saw. One of those afternoons where I wish I had brought my camera. Maybe tomorrow.... ? The best thing about time out like that in the middle of the working day is the opportunity to recharge the creative batteries, and I'm already bubbling with ideas for new prints (probably incorporating owls somewhere as I LOVE them right now) and some kind of stencilling. Watch this space.....

London to Brighton 2009

Yesterday the sun shone for a whole two hours, so Boyfriend and I went down to check out the Minis on their annual trip to the seaside. I live just off the course, so we got to watch them all the way down, too. I used to have a Mini (a lovely 1992 1.3 cherry red Mini Sprite - chrome wing mirrors, chrome GB on the boot, CD player - all the essentials a girl in her late teens/early 20s requires) and even though I lived at the beginning of the route for two years, never joined in. Dagnammit I wish I had. Anyway, regrets and nostalgia aside, there were some BEAUTS to be seen yesterday. Even briefly stopped to seriously consider purchasing one that was for sale (Turquoise, convertible, 12 months MOT, 6 months tax, only £2250) but only briefly. Boyfriend got even more excited than I did and he can't even drive!



This one has gold glitter in the paint. And check out the sparkles on the engine!






















I can't get over how clean these engines are! They must wash them down after every trip. Or they're fake engines they just swap in and out.

Overall, had an awesome weekend with Boyfriend. Popped in on a few Open Houses up at Fiveways, went for tea (twice), found a lovely park, ate ice cream, looked at potential areas to move to come November, saw beautiful cars, had two consecutive lie-ins, walked a lot. What more could you want?

Pirates & Socks Rock

The Hummingbird Spiral socks are done and dusted. I actually finished them last week, but had to wait for Boyfriend to turn up before I could get a proper photo of them in all their glory. I am very chuffed with these - hand dyed and knitted in a funky new (to me) pattern. Awesome.



I got home today from a full-branch-library-day-with-annoying-cold-bunging-up-my-head to find this uber-awesome surprise waiting for me:





A screenprinted postcard from the fabulously talented Debbie. Can you believe my card here is no.3 out of 149?! ALL hand screened?! The girl is crazy. Brilliant, but crazy. He's going straight up on my Wall of Cool. I love the Henry VII stamp, too. Hmmm....screenprints, stamps, Tudors, pirates, postcards.....ticks an awful lot of my Nerd boxes. Thank you, Deb!

I Heart New Stationery

Makes doing your accounts just that little bit more enjoyable.

Updated Shops! Again!

Just a quick one to let you know that I have finally added my knitted monsters to my Etsy and Folksy shops. Different monsters in each. Go on, treat yourself.

PBK09 PV

Well, Boyfriend and I had a lovely day yesterday, if a rather manic one. We had a nice, lazy morning then wandered into town which was HEAVING. Totally forgot it was the Children's Parade, plus the start of all the other Festival activities. Bah, tourists. We went to Show Below, loved Graham Carter's stuff, and then to the PV at the library.

I think room looked great. Much better than when I left it last Sunday! There's definitely room for improvement for next year, but as it is the first one we've ever done it was pretty impressive. I saw several people looking through my prints (buy them! buy them!) and one guy told me he'd be back next weekend with some cash, which was encouraging.



Look! My work! Up on a wall! V exciting.







Everyone's work looked really good. LOVE Lucy's pier and boats screenprints in the middle there.

Then Boyfriend and I caught a bus down to Hove and waited for half an hour for an ice cream at Marrocco's. Check the queue:



A rare glimpse of Boyfriend at the end of the queue, there.

They do home-make the best ice cream EVER, though. These babies are caramel and pistachio with two fudge sticks on the left, and banana & strawberry ripple with cookies & cream and one fudge stick on the right. Hom nom nom.



We bused it home, had a bit of a rest, then got changed to go out to dinner at La Fourchette, which was lovely. I had the best rack of lamb with the yummiest spinach I've ever had, and even managed not to get squiffy on one vodka and orange. After that we were both understandably knackered and went straight to bed when we got in!

Oh, and I also changed my hair colour again. Bit more on the cherry/pillarbox side of things rather than ORANGE. Really hope I'm not going to end up bald.



Right now we have eight made-by-Boyfriend bread rolls baking in the oven ready for taking down to Preston Park for a little picnic/BBQ later. Can't wait. Might even take my knitting.

Apple Turnovers, Books Finished and Weekend to Come

This week I had a go at making my own Apple Turnovers. Never made them before, had no recipe to follow, but just thought I'd take a whack, anyway.

I'd made a pie the day before and had half a pack of puff pastry left over (and that had been lurking at the back of the freezer since Christmas), plus a couple of Bramley apples from the weekend before where I'd planned to make apple sauce with our roast pork, but instead baked half the apples with the meat.

So I simply peeled the two apples, chunked them, bunged them in a saucepan with a teaspoon of cinnamon, a good sprinkling of caster sugar and about half a cup of water. Brought it all to a boil, then waited until the apple was soft enough to crush with a potato masher. I left it to cool for about 30 minutes, until it was still slightly warm, but not completely cold.

Meanwhile, I rolled out my remaining pastry and cut it into two large squares, covered one triangular half with the apple, folded the other half of the pastry over, sealed the edges with milk wash and a fork to crimp the seams, and poked a couple of air holes in the top. Then I brushed milk over the surface and sprinkled with demerara sugar and a little more cinnamon. On to a baking tray, then baked for 30 mins or so at 200 degrees C. Job done.

As you can see, I overfilled them a bit and this one exploded slightly, but they were AMAZING. The demerara sugar on the top hardened into a lovely crust and was definitely the best bit, although getting it off my baking tray afterwards was not so much fun. This would easily have made four smaller turnovers, but Boyfriend and I are gannets. I do love it when an experiment turns out so well.



In other news, on Wednesday I finally finished reading Antonia Fraser's Six Wives of Henry VIII, which I started waaay back at the end of January. A rather sudden ending, but generally I enjoyed it, particularly discovering my new favourite word: "philoprogenitive"*. I have a bit of a reading bug now and might even get around to reading all those books I got for Christmas! I have, however, reserved myself a whole load of audiobooks through the library. I don't feel quite so guilty about reading if I can do something else at the same time. I've just started reading Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber" (inspired by my recent LRRH prints) and I'm really digging her style.

Boyfriend is here this weekend (as he has been all week) and I'm very much looking forward to some time off with him. It's the PV of the PBK09 show tomorrow afternoon, so I'll take some photos to put up here. If I've got time to take any, in between all the schmoozing and air kissing, that is.

*This means to have a love of children, or to have a large family. Henry VIII, for example, divorced Catherine of Aragon because of his philoprogenitive desires. That is, because he wanted a son more than anything else. Get me, eh?

The "Shoulderette" is Finally Complete!

And, according to Ravelry, in only a mere eight months and seven days since I cast it on. I know, I know. It's an easy pattern, but in my defence I have been busy and I did run out of yarn and then my sock obsession got in the way....you know how it is.

Anyway, it's done, and I'm rather chuffed with it.



Oh dear. Hair is rather in need of a good handful of gel.

New Website Is Alive and Kicking!

My re-designed website is now up and running. Hurrah! After the initial Oh-My-God-What-Have-I-Taken-On-Here moment, it actually came together quite quickly. It's somewhat pared down compared to its previous incarnation, but I think it's easier to navigate. Go check it out here. Can't wait until June when all the Pirates stuff can go up, and then September, when all the Frogs stuff can join it, too. Feeling in a particularly web-based-tidying mood, I also updated my rather neglected childrensillustrators.com pages. All I have to do now is spruce up my Picture Book page and I'm all done!



I have to say I'm pretty chuffed with this little animation. So simple (only four frames) but very effective.

Speaking of Things to Salivate Over...

..here is some lovely yarn:





These are the by-products of our second Dyeing Day last Tuesday at Jan's. I love this hand-dyeing malarky. Again, these were fabulously named by Steph as "Hummingbird" and "Lolita". As you can see, "Hummingbird" is already making its way into a pair of socks for Boyfriend*.

I've just come back from the print studio where I finished all the LRRH prints this afternoon. I'm uber chuffed as I thought I would definitely have to go back in tomorrow, but thankfully it all went super-smoothly and it's now no longer necessary. I will be spending my day looking for suitable A2 card and washing my bedclothes instead!

* I did for a moment think "this yarn is waaaaay too nice to make into boy socks!", but then my caring, sharing side kicked in and I relented. Bah.

Cream Crackered and it's Only Monday

My. Feet. Ache. I've been up to Lahhdahhn Tahn today to the London Book Fair. I didn't stay long, but I got to meet up with my first publishers again, and meet one of my current publishers face to face after months of emailing, which was lovely. I casually dropped the fact I'd written a junior novel into the conversation and they asked me to email it in, so that's a bonus.

I met up with Boyfriend for lunch beforehand (even though I'd only said goodbye to him this morning) in St.James' park and marvelled at all the lovely tulips.



Then it was off to the fair, then a trawl through the artshops after A2 card to protect my screenprints. None to be found that wasn't either too flimsy or too expensive, so I will have to have a look around the shops here before Saturday when it all has to be delivered to the library ready for hanging.

This weekend was very nice. Boyfriend and I finished painting my bedroom (which didn't have much left to do on it, so it only took an hour or two) on Saturday, then went for a monster walk on Sunday up to Queen's Park, down to the seafront, along to Hove then back up to Dyke Road and home. We found a lovely cafe next to the park called Home which I'd read good things about in the past, but had never ventured up there to sample them. I had these FANTASTIC pancakes with summer berries and greek yoghurt, and Boyfriend had a dish of baked mushrooms, egg and goat's cheese served with toast. All very yummy, and I couldn't help but think what a fabulous place for a knit it would be! They had some very homnomnom sounding Apple & Carrot Cake on the menu, too.....





Excuse the slightly dodgy photos; they were taken on my phone and I was busy salivating.

Apron no1 of Potentially Many

I've got a bit of a thing for making aprons right now. I got this fab book, "A is for Apron", for my birthday last year, wanted to make everything in it at the time, but have only now had the chance to get the old sewing machine out. (Not only are the patterns in it lovely, the title reflects another of my current obsessions, alphabets. Awesome all round)

I made a simple bib apron for my Ma for her birthday last week, but, of course, forgot to take a photo of it. It was so quick and easy that I made another straight after for myself (which I also happen to be wearing right now). Here is Youngest Sister beautifully modelling it for me:





Quite impressed with myself as I have never made anything from a pattern before. Usually it's just curtains or transforming a pair of jeans into a skirt. I even altered the pattern slightly for the second go as my hips are quite high up (which is a blinkin' pain int' bum when buying tops as I have to make sure they are long enough to balance my weird-arse figure out) so I shortened the top half to make the ties higher. And check out that bias binding, man! Never used that before, either.

I've cut out a third apron already, so I'll keep you posted on its progress! Quite what I'll do with all these aprons, I'm not entirely sure! Etsying them seems a good idea. But it is a good way to use my Ikea fabric stash, another thing I have a weakness for. No trip to the Blue and Yellow Place is complete without just a metre of this one, and just a metre of that one over there. Ooo! That one's nice.....

New Toy, New Hair.

So the iMac is here at last! It came last Tuesday, but it took me until Friday to get it out the box. It is AMAZING. So fast! Boyfriend and I worked out it's SIX times faster than the poor little MacMini (not that it was a bad computer, just not big and beefy enough for my present requirements.) I feel I've hardly started playing with it, but I'm sure there are projects around the corner that will mean I spend all my time playing ... um, that's working on it. It's going to make my working processes so much easier and quicker. And it's great to watching films/TV on, too!

I feel I've barely stopped to take a breath in the past week, although I also don't seem to have all that much to show for it! Boyfriend and I spent the weekend painting my kitchen, which is now lovely and clean and bright, and putting up two new shelves in there. There's been a bit of crafting and knitting going on, and a trip up to London to the Tower. (Which was fab. Go see the Henry VIII: Dressed To Kill exhibition. Modern, exciting and uber informative.)

As you can see, I've also changed my hair colour again. The pink was lovely, but it just faded so fast and left me with two-tone hair. I had to go to the hairdressers and beg them to cut all the over-processed orange-tinged ends of my hair off. Be that a lesson to you, my children, don't bleach over an already existing permananent colour. So I am a tomato now.

So now I am going to have the long Easter weekend off, spending it at my Ma's, followed by another Dyeing Day (that's yarn, not hair), then working on updating my sorely neglected website for the rest of that week. Then there's a bit more screenprinting the week after to finish off the Little Red Riding Hood prints ready for submission on the 25th. Phew! The postcards I ordered last Tuesday came this Tuesday, even though I opted for the slow 21 day delivery. I've never ordered cards with a coloured reverse side before, and I have to say they've turned out beautifully. Vistaprint really can be brilliant sometimes. I know a lot of people don't like them, but I've never had any problems.

So the postcards are here, and I've ordered cellophane bags for them and the A2 prints, and three frames to display the best copies. I've just got to get some card to put in with the prints to protect them - and to actually finish them off, of course! So I'm pretty organised. All I need now is people to buy them!

The Past Week in Pictures

Work in Progress....

Cream Crackered

Wow! Uber long day in the printroom although, I have to say, the time just flew by. I had so much to carry in my over-stuffed "Big Shoulderbag" that I couldn't squeeze in my camera to document it all (not that I would've had time!) so apologies for no photos as yet. BB Wolf is completely finished and I've set up a new screen ready to print Grandma tomorrow evening. I'm only in for four hours, so I think I'll only manage to get the backgrounds done, with the possibilty of a few of the keylines. I'll try to take the camera tomorrow if I can fit it in my bag. Feet are killing me.

On a bit of a different note, one of my favourite illustrators, Jen Corace, has a show on in Philadelphia at the moment, which you can read all about and look at the beautiful illustrations here. I LOVE her stuff - I have a couple of her children's books and her "Hansel and Gretel" has been on my Amazon wishlist for ages - and these larger pieces are just beautiful. I love the negative space. What I am very excited about is her silhouettes. They give me all sorts of ideas for potential future screenprints. Negative space, negative space....hmmmm...........

Prints & Postcards

The final designs to be screenprinted:







The finished size will be 39 cm x 49cm printed on A2 cartridge. These three will also be printed up as postcards by good old Vistaprint (with slight re-jigging to fit the taller format) with this image on the back:



(My phone number is the part blurred out)

I did um and ahh about this other white version below, but as I received three other Objective Opinions in the favour of the black path version I naturally had to swing that way!



REALLY looking forward to the print session tomorrow.

In other news, the new iMac came today! I'm going to wait until Thursday when I'll have pretty much all day to set it up, otherwise I'll still be here at 4 in the morning playing with it!